On January 14, 2021, Chair Michael Ding of the Quality Brand Protection Committee of China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment (referred to as QBPC), Vice Chair Ying Ji and Customs Committee members held an online exchange meeting with Mr. Huang Jianhua, Director of Department of General Operation of General Administration of Customs. The two sides reviewed the IPR border protection work in 2020 and had in-depth exchanges on the 2021 cooperation plan and some hot issues. Customs Committee Chair Alan Liu, Vice Chairs Ken Chen, Wendy Lin, Angela Shi and Jerry Yang attended this meeting.
At the beginning of the meeting, Michael Ding introduced the new members of the Customs Committee from 2021- 2022 to Mr. Huang. He said that, despite the negative impact of the covid-19 outbreak in 2020, the Customs Committee continued to work in an orderly manner through online training exchanges, with active participation of members and enthusiastic response. Michael looked forward to further strengthening exchanges and cooperation and promoting and implementing more successful projects in 2021. He also hoped that customs could timely share data and foreign-related successful cases to help the right holders and the international community learn more about China's IPR border protection achievements and progress. Then, Ying Ji made a summary of the 2020 IPR work. She mentioned that a number of online training sessions were held in 2020, among which the largest one was attended by nearly 800 customs officials with positive results. We look forward to cooperation in more forms and dimensions between the customs and QBPC in the future.
In the Q&A session, the members of the Customs Committee had a heated discussion with Director Huang on hot issues and their own experiences, including how to publicize successful cases and promote exchanges and cooperation; formulation of special actions or policies for epidemic prevention materials by the Customs in 2021; how to strengthen the protection of the right holder's copyright, industrial design right and other rights; how to determine the calculation standard of storage cost and what information should be provided in the payment notice; what actions the customs and public security departments could take as transnational counterfeiting gangs continue to use new methods to evade Customs crackdown; in terms of information sharing and exchange, if the customs could set up special activities in bridging administrative and judicial IP enforcement to share experience, so as to effectively convey information to key ports; in the process of right confirmation, how to solve the difficulties in obtaining picture information.
In response, Director Huang said that the Customs was willing to do its best to address the issues of common concern to right holders and to conduct two-way interaction and communication with right holders through various forms of activities, so as to help the QBPC members tell China stories well. At the same time, the customs authority had been upgrading the system and improving the relevant systems, with the purpose of better safeguarding the legitimate interests of the right holders and cracking down on infringement and counterfeiting. Huang also mentioned that even in the epidemic period, the customs seizures still increased by about 20% to 30% compared with the previous year, which proved that the customs had not been slacking down the work of combating infringement and counterfeiting. In 2021, Customs would continue to strengthen the enforcement, promote and deploy special activities at different levels, and focus on the details.
Through the meeting, GACC and QBPC have reached consensus on the intention and direction for cooperation, laying a solid foundation for in-depth exchanges in 2021.